LOOKING FOR DR KARADZIC
Tom Walker on how he and other
journalists in the Balkans have become bounty hunters
Podgorica, Montenegro I THOUGHT of it first back in 1998, lying in a log cabin, high in the grassy wastes of Zlatibor mountain in western Serbia. As the wind whistled plaintively and agitated the calendar featuring the Audi Quattro and the girl with an unfeasibly bulbous bosom, I had a tantalising glimpse of the future for correspondents in the region. Easy money, I thought.
From the same simple bed of pine slats where I reclined, the war-crimes suspect Stevan Todorovic had been snatched just two months earlier, a gun at his head, and dragged into the night, while that same incessant wind blew outside and the dogs yapped in vain on the farm down the hill. Poor Stevan was not even afforded one last look at his beloved calendar, nor allowed to don one of the psychedelic ties that hung beside it; he was bundled into a car and across the Drina river where he met his Nato reception committee, who then flew him up to The Hague on a one-way ticket.
It has since emerged that `Steva', as he is known in my family — more on that later — was snatched by bounty hunters who, according to American sources I know, were paid about $250,000 for the job. Bounty hunting in the Balkans was a somewhat secretive subject until, two weeks ago, Europe's most creative infor- mation minister, Yugoslavia's Goran Matic, announced that his army had cap- tured four Dutchmen intent on driving Slobodan Milosevic out of Belgrade in a ski-box. Another version had it that Milo- sevic's head was to be presented on a plat- ter to the G8 meeting in Okinawa. Since then the Yugoslav information ministry has declared open season on unsuspecting Westerners and now has two of our police- men under lock and key, this time charged with terrorism.
The US state department's offer of a $5 million reward for providing information leading to the arrest of either Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic or Ratko Mladic was bound, of course, to result in farce. Turning the Balkans into a latter-day Wild West is almost certain to attract more crazed Dutch 'weekend warriors', but they should be warned. They will have competition. Despite my profession's legendary skill at creative accountancy, $5 million is a large sum for a journalist, certainly more than a satellite-phone bill or anything that can be put down under extraordinary items on the monthly expenses. Every Balkan hack worth his salt has become a part-time bounty hunter over the last few years. Slowly but surely we started buying the gear: the Israeli-made night-vision devices, funny cameras you can wear on your buttonhole or in spectacle frames; a short-wave radio scanner became as much part of the journo's kit as the notebook. Some of these have already been rumbled by the locals, after CBS used the spectacle-cameras to film a Serb war criminal; and in the Kosovo conflict it was not unusual for myopic corre- spondents to have their glasses removed at checkpoints by gap-toothed peasants acting on orders from above.
Recently some friends were in Foca, the Klondike of bounty hunting in Eastern Republika Srpska, where they encountered a Russian UN worker. 'We're journalists,' they insisted. 'Ali, right, journalists,' he mused, with a nudge and a wink. 'You're the hit squad, right?'
But with one eye on the story, and one on the $5 million, we persist. As I said, I saw all this coming as I lay on Stevan's bed in Zlatibor, and since Todorovic was the best man of one my wife's distant uncles, I have the cachet, unique among British journalists, of having a suspect close to the family. I have a nasty suspicion that some colleagues even came to my wedding in Belgrade wired up with hidden sensors.
Those bounty hunters most likely to suc- ceed are the Balkans aficionados who have 'They're Monroe's.' stayed so long and gone so native that they blend in with the native shell-suit fraterni- ty. I was with one of these recently — let us call him agent 'H' — and he drives a BMW that is monstrous and darkened enough to impress any military or paramilitary check- point. In a similar situation, the two hap- less British policemen had been arrested, but we cruised through a military check- point with a small fine for not having a warning triangle. Soon we found ourselves drinking coffee and sipping raid with the elderly mother of someone worth, accord- ing to Washington's proclamations, a not inconsiderable sum.
The old lady — stooped, wrinlded and dressed in black — was charming, but pro- vided no new leads. As we sat with her, the phone went unanswered — could that have been him, several million dollars' worth, on the other end? A trip to a local coffee- house with a niece also yielded little, save that she had split up with her boyfriend. At least we got her email address.
In the police headquarters of the capital, we found a delightfully corrupt officer in charge of the visa section. A bottle of whisky was handed over, and we were assured that our documents would always be in order in future. Think about that $5 million, we told him. We bided our time playing roulette in the casino, the favourite environment of most local ne'er-do-wells. H has always claimed that he can read the wheel, judge the bounce of the ball — a boast that has led to disastrous impecunity in various regional capitals.
Five hundred deutschmarks down, we left for Niksic, home of the Karadzic family, where we skidded the BMW to a halt in front of a garage labelled ICARADZIC. The mechanics liked that touch immensely and showed us the house down the road, past the kiosk with the pile of melons, where five million dollars' worth of The Hague materi- al, unseen for four years, is said to visit sometimes. There was no one home. We went on to other houses in the east and then dropped back to the Adriatic coast at sunset — the dream life of the journalist-agent.
Some bounty hunters may be inspired by reading the exploits of the travel writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor who, when in the SAS in 1943, snatched the German general, Kreipe, on Crete and smuggled him out in a submarine. But the reality of modern bounty hunting is that anyone successful will need not a ski-box or a naval flotilla, but a way of living with the locals. Holly- wood directors are already poring over scripts in which American journalists per- form a bizarre citizen's arrest on the 'evil doctor' in a faraway Balkan town. But in all likelihood anyone banking the millions will probably do so through a whispered titbit picked up over a coffee in a smoke-filled café. They'll be wearing a shell-suit, not a Nato uniform, and my money is on H.
The author is diplomatic correspondent of the Sunday Times.
Previous page
